Annoying Moments in otherwise Great Games

[Britton]

There's a moment in Sword Of Vermillion for the Sega Genesis where you enter a town... I can't remember what happens, but you're given a choice of something or other and depending on which way you answer, you can lose all your equipment. It's over halfway through the game and I picked that answer and was stripped of everything, so I had to grind outside of town to get money to buy more equipment. I was mad, bro. lol

[TiamatNM]

Riviera: the forest seasons puzzle and the flooded area puzzle with the colored stones

[Zendervai]

Riviera's whole system was kind of annoying. It was really obvious that it was St!ng's first attempt at that deconstructionist gameplay thing.

[TiamatNM]

Well I think it's great.  There's not really anything else like it either as far as I know.

[Aeolus]

Riviera was a great idea on paper, but in practice it divided the game into two completely separate play styles. You either knew what you were doing and constantly walked over the game, or you didn't and got your ass constantly handed to you.

Still, nobody else has really tried what it did since, so there's that going for it.


Belated but:

You remembered correctly in that Feena is very forward and a strong character in the ghost ship, but I can't stand Grandia's ghost ship in general.  It was actually one of the ships I was thinking of when I made that comment. The problem with ghost ships is that they're almost always filler, and I can only think of a handful of plot related ones. Legend of Dragoon comes to mind, being very important in the grand scheme of the plot, but you don't realize it until later.  It still falls under my banner of ghost ships being annoying because both the encounters and the boss are horrible.

I suppose I do like Breath of Fire 3's, but it's not a ghost ship in a traditional sense.

As for the damsel in distress bit, I wouldn't say Feena is a damsel in distress throughout the entire game, simply that her outspoken attitude from the ghost ship is downplayed more as the story progresses.  She's never quite "weak" or "helpless," but there are a few times where she needs rescuing.

Maybe. But I cant help but see it as her personality getting more and more subdued as time went on to make way for Justin becoming more and more of a man until the end where she hit full on damsel in distress for Justin to save along with the world and the day and to graduate into a full fledged hero (at that point Feena is little more than his diploma).

It kinda leads me to my beef with the Grandia series on the whole. None of the games have a decent cast. Its basically the main hero, the chick who turns out to be a walking plot macguffin magical girl, the buddy, the twerp, the older guy/sudo mentor, the android chick found in some ruins, and maybe another chick who's both the least dislikable and only shows up for a dungeon or two then gets ditched/bails. Also the settings file themselves right into the same bad writing category as FFVIII's setting (i.e. they disintegrate into a goofy ball of cobbled together analogues, metaphors, cliches, and elemental based gimmick dungeons, the very moment Mr. Scrutiny violates his restraining order to stay at least 50ft away from the writing).

[GuardianBoi]

Final Fantasy 6: my finger slipping and agreeing to jump off the floating island before Shadow can make it back, sending that poor man to his death and being STUCK with a useless Relm and her now orphaned dog.

[Raziel]

Xenogears was generally poor anyway, but dear lord did stuff like Babel make it even more infuriating. I mean, really?

[PotRoast]

Every time I had to fight anything in combat in Planescape: Torment.

[TiamatNM]

Riviera was a great idea on paper, but in practice it divided the game into two completely separate play styles. You either knew what you were doing and constantly walked over the game, or you didn't and got your ass constantly handed to you.

The game wasn't about the combat though imo.  It is a pretty easy game unless you totally fail to understand the basic game system (though I haven't tried a zero grinding run).  It's not complicated.  It's more about the characters, relationship system, and having lots of choices to make at various triggers throughout the game.  

It kinda leads me to my beef with the Grandia series on the whole. None of the games have a decent cast. Its basically the main hero, the chick who turns out to be a walking plot macguffin magical girl, the buddy, the twerp, the older guy/sudo mentor, the android chick found in some ruins, and maybe another chick who's both the least dislikable and only shows up for a dungeon or two then gets ditched/bails. Also the settings file themselves right into the same bad writing category as FFVIII's setting (i.e. they disintegrate into a goofy ball of cobbled together analogues, metaphors, cliches, and elemental based gimmick dungeons, the very moment Mr. Scrutiny violates his restraining order to stay at least 50ft away from the writing).

Millenia and Sue are the best characters.  Millenia is barely ever in your party and Sue leaves less than halfway through G1.  Overall plot is weak in all the grandia games but I do like those characters.  Didn't like any of the G3 characters.  

Also, Ryudo was a fun main character until his personality totally changed :P

[Agent D.]

Mareg was king of Grandia 2. His ending was that of a king of warriors!

I do have to add one now, dawned on me last night. The entire Wutai sequence in FFVII, especially if the whore steals all of your materia, as I sometimes got lucky and was left with a couple. I mean seriously, you have crap weapons since you can't upgrade til after Wutai, no materia, and a very annoying walk to the town without anything but the plain vanilla attack and some items, which you probably only had a few xpotions for healing purposes and a bunch of useless hi potions. It could easily be one of the most i.furiating areas in that game.

Speaking of FFVII, is it odd that I still remember the code for the space ship to release the blue huge materia? It's either circle circle square x or circle circle x square, but 90% sure it's the first one.

[Cyril]

Oh dear, Wutai.  I had blocked that out of my mind.  Kalm may be my FFVII roadblock, but there's nothing inherently bad about it, where Wutai is just terrible.

[Agent D.]

Lol, Kalm. I still remember my first playthrough of FFVII when I tried to get past the swamp and didn't realize that the little scene with the big snake was the cave entrance. I ended up spending 2 days at Kalm just leveling and figuring out where I fudged up. Ended up killing the snake once I was so retardedly powered up.

[MeshGearFox]

Wasn't Feena like a lot older than Justin?

I mean doesn't that make her not only a weak damsel in distress but also a boy hungry pedophile?

Oh wait I guess not...

Why the fuck does Feena act like an adult at the start and Justin acts like a five year old?

WRT Riviera, most annoying thing with that game is trying to play it on a Gameboy player. The QTEs are fucking impossible on a GC controller.

Also while LoM didn't really have stellar dungeon  design, the Midas Ruins really got on my nerves for some reason. I think it was the gate puzzle.

[Ashton]

Feena was one year older than Justin, if that. She just looks a lot older because of the Japanese habit of 'if she's anything over 12, make her the sex symbol.'

[MeshGearFox]

[r-to-the-edacted]

Also I found the first dungeon in Ark of Napishtim totally weak. It's cool once you go BACK there after you can open stuff up in it, but the first time it's like BIG EMPTY ROOMS FILLED WITH BEATLES and you're justing cleaving down Ringos left and right without any need to heed what you're exactly doing. And it kind of turned me off the game initially because said dungeon is bookended by a lot of big, empty fields and it's not readily apparent at that point that the area design improves immensely as it goes on.

Phantasy Star 1 - The beginning, which is the only part where you truly need to do heavy grinding. It's not really that bad but it's a definite snag in something that flows really smoothly afterwards.

Dragon Quest 4 - Torneko's Chapter. Found it really grindy, especially if you're going for the Cool Bro Sword.

Fallout 2 - That dungeon where you kill a bunch of mole rats and there's nothing in there it's just a fucking maze and you kill molerats and it's like the second dungeon in the game.

Romancing Saga 3 - Muse's dream and the random nature of some of the doors in that dungeon realllllly got on my nerves.

SotN - The entire second castle. Really easy, really straightforward, no puzzles -- it's filler but it's filler that take a long time to go through for what it is.

PST - Mentioned this elsewhere but the opening section in the morgue of the game REALLY rubs me the wrong way.

Saga Frontier - Having to do the magic quests for like every character.

Arx Fatalis - Another game that has a really slow and uninteresting first two hours that don't give any indication that the rest of the game is indeed in fact pretty great.

Chrono Cross -- FUCKING GHOST SHIP.

Terranigma - Dragoon Castle, and going to Nirlake dungeon to get the plane.

Star Ocean 2 - Lacouer Front Line/hoffman ruins, with those... one hit KO firebreathing things.  Also the general way your skills took so long to get useful that the game was already over by that point.